I recently received a notice from my employer informing me that insurance premiums are going up. It stated that:
Which of these factors could politicians who care about their constituents most easily do something about? Certainly, they could institute tort reform to curb the litigation explosion, but every time tort reform is proposed it is defeated by the trial lawyers and their lackeys in Congress.
Why is that? Which political party is most vigorously opposed to tort reform? Paradoxically, it's the party of the working man. Which party's current candidates for the presidency are both opposed to tort reform? Same answer. Which party is running a candidate for vice-president who is a trial lawyer who made his millions suing medical practitioners on the basis of junk science? Same answer.
If the Democrats win in November we can expect that litigation against doctors, drug companies, and hospitals will continue apace, and your and my insurance premiums will continue to rise. The Democratic party receives fat contributions from trial lawyer associations, and they're not about to do anything to upset their donors.
Who benefits from a lawsuit-intoxicated society? A few plaintiffs, to be sure, but the big winners are the trial lawyers who will continue to rake in their obscene fees at the expense of the rest of us out of whose pockets they ultimately come. The people are the losers. We lose by having to pay higher prices for drugs, services and goods, and we lose because those who provide those things are forced out of business or out of the area by the fear of legal judgments that they could never pay.
There really are four elements to this fleecing of the American citizen: There are avaricious and dopey plaintiffs like the woman who spilled a McDonald's coffee in her lap; there are unprincipled lawyers who, like professional assassins and prostitutes, hire themselves out to whoever can pay their fee; there are otiose jurors who are torn away from watching Oprah and the soaps long enough to listen to the facts of the case, render justice, and then return home in time to catch Jerry Springer reruns; and finally there are liberal judges who love nothing more than an opportunity to redistribute wealth even if it means killing the geese who are laying the golden eggs.
The legal system needs to be purged of the symbiotic coupling of greed and stupidity that currently pollutes it. It needs to be changed so that those who do have a legitimate case can get redress, but also so that those who don't, can't. We mustn't count on the Democrats, however, to come to the aid of the common man on this one, not as long as their buddies in the law firms stand to lose a couple of payments on their yachts if reform ever becomes a reality.
Help is on the way. Indeed.